Religion
Related: About this forumPublic Religion in a Post-Christian Age, Graduation Edition
May 9, 2013
By David Gushee
Its graduation season, and as such a golden opportunity to observe the various ways religion is handled in American public life circa 2013.
A graduation is a momentous occasion for graduates and their families, and such a major rite of passage tends to evoke some kind of effort on the part of high school, college, and graduate school leaders (and commencement speakers) to reach for rhetorical profundity.
But what kind of profundity is acceptable in our pluralistic public space? Can a public high school organize a graduation service that appeals to religious themes? Can a religiously diverse private college invite a commencement speaker representing only one of the many religious traditions represented in the room? Or, given religious diversity, should schools try to maintain an air of resolute non-religiosity?
As a college and seminary professor, and as a dad, I have spent a lot of time at graduations. I have attended private Christian high school and college graduations, public high school graduations, Baptist seminary graduations, post-Baptist university graduations, and more. Hours of having to listen to endless name-reading has given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on the way religion, and ethics, are handled at graduations. And there are clues here related to public religion in our post-Christian age.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7107/public_religion_in_a_post_christian_age__graduation_edition/
Jim__
(14,083 posts)I agree with a lot of what the article says about our limiting the ability of public ceremonies to inspire. Inspiration requires belief, at least in a potentially good future. But, if someone wants to speak about a good future, we can never all agree on what that means, and so, to avoid controversy, speakers often just offer a few perfuctory congratulatory remarks.
Yesterday someone posted a video of David Foster Wallace's somewhat well-known 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College. It fits into the no faith category of Gushee. Yet, it is inspiring.
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="